The king and us, myth and all

Published 12:00 am, Thursday, February 17, 2011

Audiences have ruled. "The King's Speech" demands to be heard, depicting the true struggles of King George VI and the stammer that threatened his identify and his crown.

As the film broadens its reign over the box offices and award shows -- it's up for 12 Oscars -- it's also given voice to a segment of the population that often doesn't have one. Stuttering affects 1 percent of adults worldwide. In 1936, King George VI spoke for England, but in 2011 he speaks for all of us who stammer our way through life.

This isn't the first conversation Hollywood has had about stuttering. Stuttering characters, like the public defender in "My Cousin Vinny," have long been dusted off for comic relief.

Communication disorders are rare in that they're as difficult to suffer from as they are easy to mock. But "The King's Speech" was to be different. We wouldn't be the punch line, but the foundation for the film. With that came a responsibility to ensure the right story was being told.

It wasn't.

Firth deserved the best actor Golden Globe that he received. If there's any justice, he'll take the Oscar. His stammer was painful to watch, hard to hear and difficult not to pity -- everything it need be. When Bertie, not yet crowned King George VI, stood in Westminster Abbey and shouted he had a voice worth hearing, my chest tightened, my eyes welled and my breath was taken.

I am a 28-year-old adult female stutterer, a unicorn among my own people; stuttering affects four times as many males as females. My stutter showed itself at age 5, replacing innocence with adult burden. Curling up into my father's lap at age 7 to whisper restaurant orders, the fifth grade teacher who fought to have me removed from her class, the feared look in adult eyes when I offered a broken hello to their untainted children -- these are my images.

And they were to be my fate until I decided it was enough, reclaiming a voice I wasn't sure I deserved simply by using it without shame. Each time Bertie opened his mouth and words failed, that is me.

But then Hollywood takes over. We see Bertie hesitant to open up to speech therapist Lionel Logue or accept him as an equal. Bertie's speech only improves when he embraces Logue and confesses childhood demons.

We're shown it's the manifestation of these traumas that are the root of the stammer. We see how having Logue snugly by his side, makes Bertie more comfortable, more fluent.

We see the abuse, we see the stammer, we make the connection. The wrong connection.

Creating the untrue stigma that stutterers are walking abuse victims is damaging to the 3 million Americans who suffer from the disorder.

This theory of stuttering was popularized by Freud in the late 1800s, when he linked Frau Emmy von N's stammer to hysteria and traumatic events in her past. He believed she was concealing painful information, making her unable to speak.

The theory wasn't broken in time for King George VI, but, in 2011, it's downright archaic. The true cause of stuttering is messier and largely unknown. What researchers do know is that a stutterer's brain works differently. Stutterers display higher activity in the area of the brain that controls speech movements, making it difficult for the brain to process the information and account for the correct movements. The result is disfluent speech.

Doesn't pack quite the same Hollywood punch, but that's the truth.

And it's important. As barbaric as it is to watch Colin Firth's character stuff marbles into his mouth, it's equally wrong to assume that a motor skill deficit equates trauma.

Bertie's speech doesn't improve because he's confessed demons, but because he's been taught tricks to manipulate his stutter.

The typical stutterer spends her day fighting an overactive brain and benefits not from Hollywood's dramatic liberties and reasoning. If there is a lesson in "The King's Speech," it is to look us in the eye, listen to what we have to say and allow us the dignity to say it in our distinct voice.

In real life, stutterers don't master their speech just in time for the all-important wartime address. The best they can hope is to learn to manage and accept it. It's not a Hollywood ending, but it's ours.